Description
Richard Kaczynski (Author)
Independently published, 2019. Paperback. 406 pages. Brand New.
“Is Detroit heaven?” Aleister Crowley asked his field organizer, Charles Stansfeld Jones. It certainly seemed so at the time: Bookman Albert W. Ryerson was selling Crowley’s books and publishing the latest installment of The Equinox. Several prominent Masons were interested in establishing the Lakes Region of Ordo Templi Orientis. Jones was in high demand teaching classes on magick and Thelema. But things turned suddenly sour. When slow sales dragged the Universal Book Stores into bankruptcy, the activities of the O.T.O. were luridly thrust onto the front pages of the daily news. The Equinox was declared obscene and all copies impounded. The O.T.O. love cult was blamed for everything from broken homes and Hollywood’s wild parties to the mysterious murder of film director William Desmond Taylor.
The revised and significantly expanded blue Equinox centennial edition of Panic in Detroit chronicles this chapter of Thelemic history through an original historical essay by Aleister Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski; over forty previously-unpublished letters from Crowley and his circle; never-before-seen transcripts of the Universal Book Stores’ bankruptcy trial, in which Crowley, The Equinox, and O.T.O. figure prominently; fifty newspaper article transcripts documenting what was later dubbed the “mess in the press”; a street guide to Aleister Crowley’s Detroit; an essay on the unlikely disappearance, recovery, and preservation of Crowley’s “rariora” in years after his death; and much, much more.
About the Author:
Richard Kaczynski is a lifelong student and writer on Western esotericism. He is an authority on the life and works of Aleister Crowley. The author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley and editor of Aleister Crowley’s The Sword of Song, he holds a Ph.D. in psychology with a minor in statistics. His doctoral dissertation examined the structure and correlates of metaphysical beliefs.
